The world was revealed to me through the discovery of my eyes and the touch of my fingers. Each morning, the sun painted the body of the world as it rose. The moon caressed the night with a misty, quiet light—like a whisper in the heart of darkness. Flowers loved color without reason. Rain gave birth to life from the depths of the soil. Trees stood in silent dignity, embracing each season. Water flowed silently and endlessly, finding its way through every crack, translating the world into its own language.
I was all of these not just a spectator, but those very moments themselves. I was the color hidden in a flower, the silence that flowed through the night, the softness of water weaving its way through darkness.
When I opened my eyes wider and colors began to speak to me directly, when I saw my fingers dancing across the canvas and sat down to watch, I knew: I was a painter.
As Forough once sang:
“I drew the song from the veins of the night, and with fresh breaths, I created the world anew.”
“Realism” lifted a curtain from my eyes. I learned to see the things that were always there—lost in the noise of everyday life. In the crease of a smile, in a crack in the wall, in the glint of light on a glass of water—seeing became illumination. The veil of appearance lifted, and truth was revealed.
When I looked deeper, the images began to breathe. Details broke through the surface and touched the texture of things. That’s when I realized: Hyperrealism was a new door a way of seeing and touching, of hearing the quiet voices of things that had long gone unnoticed.
In this style, every line, every glint of light, every smallest shadow is like a heartbeat—one you can hear if you listen carefully.
Yet something within me still remained unsettled. I longed to go beyond the boundaries, to enter a space where fantasy and reality blend together where they coexist in everything.
Surrealism became that home. A place where meaning is not hidden behind form, but revealed in the free movement of the mind. In surrealism, the image is not for repetition, but for discovery. The revelation is never complete.
For me, painting is like walking through a forest. If I had not become a painter, perhaps I would have planted trees, touched their leaves, spoken to the soil. But now, I paint that very forest on canvas with colors that come from the heart of life and return to it with life.
I’ve learned to share my world with hands eager to create, and to teach them too. With each art student, a new dialogue begins—not shaped by complexity or simplicity, but by what is hidden in their gaze. They are a continuation of my path, with color that arises from within themselves.
Color flows through me like a breeze brushing past a memory bringing something to life without saying a word.
Each work comes from a place where words cannot reach a space between the lived and the unlived, between touch and imagination.
And where poetry passes through color, Sohrab’s voice echoes in my ears:
“You must wash your eyes. You must see differently.”
Sometimes, among the lines and shadows, there is a silence not one that hides, but one that waits for someone to come and discover it.
I am Parvaneh Abdollahi. Painting is my profession, but my life is found in the moments when color flows through the world and settles on the canvas.
Each of my works is a dialogue one I’ve begun with the world using color, light, and the quiet silence of shadows.
To see what remains hidden in everyday vision. To hear the restless whisper of lines that long to awaken. To touch the movement of life woven from memory and imagination.
I invite you into my world.
Come see. Come hear. Come touch.
Cheers
Parvaneh